|
Abstract |
A monsoon is a seasonal reversal in the prevailing wind direction, that is usually initiated by the land sea temperature contrast. The Indian summer monsoon, for example, is triggered when the land gets heated up more than the surrounding sea during the summer creating a pressure gradient between the land and the sea. It is well known that the ocean thermal energy required for fueling monsoon circulations comes from the upper layer of the ocean (e.g. Venugopal et al. 2018). But such amount of energy does not come from the top thin layer represented by sea surface temperature (SST) alone. Nevertheless, often SST does not represent the thermal energy available in the upper ocean, although this parameter has been the only oceanographic input to the cyclone and monsoon atmospheric numerical and statistical models. |
|